


Scrappy Delusions

by IlluminateandRelate



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Canon Compliant, Existentialism, M/M, The knives in the wall my dudes, Tokyo Ghoul :re Spoilers, im back baby, inspired after that one manga panel and also Zakki, mutsurie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27539935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IlluminateandRelate/pseuds/IlluminateandRelate
Summary: Urie’s a spectacular liar. That much he’s aware of. He’s aware of the power a smile holds, the power of a grimace, and of the disarming nature of each. He’s aware that lies are a little silver skeleton key to everybody’s heart, and that flattery will get you everywhere, easily. Nineteen years of being an insufferable ass will do that to you.***Urie walks into Mutsuki's room for some reason he can't quite explain only to find the knives left upon the wall and Mutsuki's eyepatch on the floor. He can't quite decide how to feel.
Relationships: Mutsuki Tooru/Urie Kuki
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	Scrappy Delusions

Urie’s a spectacular liar. That much he’s aware of. He’s aware of the power a smile holds, the power of a grimace, and of the disarming nature of each. He’s aware that lies are a little silver skeleton key to everybody’s heart, and that flattery will get you everywhere, easily. Nineteen years of being an insufferable ass will do that to you. Nineteen years of treating lies like conversational climbing arrows, cramming well-placed ones into the weak points of a castle wall conversation and then clambering up them to reach the top of some unattainable goal.  
He’s aware that he’s a fantastic liar, which is why he’s so bad at doing it to himself. You can’t out-cheat a cheater and you can’t out-lie a liar; which is both how Urie knows that Mutsuki’s not really fine, and how he knows that he’s not really either. Honest players like Shirazu (may he rest in stupid peace) and Hanbee had the power of self-delusion strong enough to gaslight themselves into their own oblivions. Shirazu thinking working out once a week would make him less scrawny, and Hanbee thinking being Juuzou’s number one servant would make him a better fighter. If Urie could lie to himself like they did so easily, perhaps his predicament would be a little less terrible. He thinks that perhaps he could live with his emotions if he pretended they didn’t exist.  
But he can’t lie to himself, and he knows that. Urie knows that he’s the biggest baby of them all. He can call his own bluff by the way he clutches the stupid scrap of fabric in his fist, the elastic band of the eyepatch dangling down towards the dirty ground on which he kneels. It’d been left on the floor to collect dust over the months Mutsuki had been gone, no longer wanted since the gift from Sasaki had arrived. A newer eyepatch, leather with an adjustable strap to fit his head better. It's funny, Urie thinks, that Sasaki’s gift had taken precedence over anything these days when all Sasaki had given was empty promises and negligence. He feels his grip tighten around the damned thing, the tips of his fingers biting into his palm with the anger of it all, and he stands up stiffly, tucking the eyepatch into his pocket.  
The room still appears as if Mutsuki had only gone out for a brisk walk, with a few shirts strewn across the wooden floor, and several small personal items and photos scattered across his nightstand and desk. The only tell for the time passed is a thin layer of dust that had crept in from the outside, thick and suffocating, and settled across every surface -even the bed- which lies partially made, sheets still not tucked beneath the mattress.  
Urie walks over to the unmade bed, trying not to look at the wall behind him, the one he’d been ignoring. He’d seen it when he’d walked in, hell, it's all anybody would’ve seen if they’d walked in, impossible to miss. Helpless frustration twists up through his body in knots as he jams the untucked sheets beneath the mattress, and leans against the bed taking in a deep, dusty breath.  
Urie’s a good liar, so he knew when Mutsuki said everything was okay it was a lie. He just didn’t know it was this fucking bad.  
He can feel the wall behind him beckoning for him to turn around. Tapping on his shoulder as if to gain his attention, to demand it, to say “look at me, guess who did it? Guess who he did it for?” Urie thinks he must be a fool because he wants to look just as much as he wants not to. It’s eerie, and it's odd, and it's cold, and it’s so not Mutsuki Tooru.  
He sighs and massages his temples with his fingers, pressing his lips together into a fine line. Coming into this room was pointless, even more pointless than trying to convince Mutsuki to come back. The air leaves no traces of the boy who’d inhabited it, none of the warmth or the generosity, nor even evidence that there’d been such traits inside of Mutsuki Tooru. Urie huffs, straightens, and starts towards the exit only to pause in the doorway.  
He turns back around and watches his shadow, created by the pale yellow light of the hallway, stretch up above his head. It's long and spindly and the head of it- his head- is cast against the wall directly on top of the very thing his eyes had struggled to avoid, a dark foreboding arrow of his mind’s reflection. One that he can’t ignore anymore. He approaches it instead, shutting the door behind himself and letting his shadow swallow the room whole. Urie squints through the darkness as his eyes adjust to the dim light squeezing itself through the blinds. It shines through in thin little bars of light across the floor and bed, filtering through the particles of dust in the air. Through it he can see them, still on the wall, and he walks into the room up to the twisted mural of paper and metal.  
The dozens of knives stick out of the wall like deranged thumbtacks, holding up what must be at least one-hundred photos of a girl Urie’s not even sure he knows. It's different from the pictures of Urie, Saiko, and Sasaki that were propped up on Mutuki’s desk. The photos on Mutsuki’s desk had been framed, placed neatly on the back behind a few piles of paperwork. The glass dusty from absence but whole and unbroken. The photos on the wall are not arranged, layered over one another with some fallen to the ground. They’re ripped and torn, and stained with dirt and blood. The knives are stuck in at odd angles, some deeply lodged and some tipping out, about to fall, as if they were haphazardly flung in a fit of... something.  
Urie grimaces and reaches out to pull one from the wall, letting the photo it was stuck in flutter to the ground. The blade glints sharply in the pale light of the room, warning as he looks down upon it. His grip tightens on the hilt as something thick and black bubbles up in his chest, filling his lungs and throat with sludge, forming a lump he can’t swallow. His other fingers begin to trace the design in the knife, as his muscles grow stiff and heavy with dread.  
“Mutsuki-” he whispers into the darkness, “Jesus.”  
He looks back up at the wall, and then down again to the blade and feels his jaw clench. It's hard to believe this had been done by the same boy who demanded he be nicer to Sasaki alongside Shirazu, made him buy groceries (and actually succeeded). The whole array of images is entirely foreign and contorted, and gnarled. Urie wants an explanation, wants it badly, he wants to shake him and ask him why, why for Sasaki, and why to her, and why wouldn’t he just come back and talk to them. He thought Mutsuki was the talker.  
Urie takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly in an attempt to relax the wired emotion coursing through him. He loosens his grip on the knife and lets it drop to the floor amongst a few photos that had already fallen, they rest along the floor together forming a skewed graveyard of images. He reaches for the eyepatch recently tucked away in his pocket. The cotton on the inside of it is still soft, a pale, clean, pure white. It still looks bright in the dim light of the room.   
He feels his chest loosen as he looks at it, the piece of fabric. It’s pristine, the threads along it all still in place, the thing carefully taken care of and whole. It's Mutsuki; not the knife throwing, wicked faced, tooth grinning Mutsuki, but rather the tight-lipped, strong-willed, kind one. The one who’d managed to win over even Urie, and in more ways than one. He can’t, no, he refuses to believe it was all a lie, a scrappy delusion. The smiles, the gentle shoulder brushes, and the unabashed stance; the way Mutsuki could be such a pushover, yet so stubborn at the same time when he wanted.   
It couldn't have been a lie because Urie’s a liar. And for once that fact gives him hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I'M BACK CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?! If anyone even remembers me at this point... *cries* It doesn't matter, it feels good to return to AO3 anyways. It's been about two freaking years, hasn't it? Y'all we in a PAN-DEM-IC isn't that wild? I was such a little baby when I started posting.
> 
> Anyways, let me know how you are doing <3  
> I hope you enjoyed this little fic :)
> 
> Please feel free to message me!
> 
> Tik Tok: @franiiee_
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> Twitter: https://twitter.com/kirishimasK
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